College basketball betting: Texas Southern goes for fourth SWAC title in six years
Can Texas Southern’s run of dominance in the SWAC tournament continue?
The Tigers enter the 2022 SWAC tourney as the betting favorites as they go for a fourth conference title in the last six seasons. Texas Southern has been the SWAC’s automatic qualifier for the NCAA tournament for five of the last seven tournaments and will own the SWAC record for conference tournament titles with a 10th tournament win on Saturday.
Alcorn State enters the eight-team tournament as the No. 1 seed after breaking Prairie View A&M’s three-year streak of regular season conference titles. The regular season title is the first since 2002 for the Braves and they will face Prairie View in the first round of the tournament on Wednesday.
The top eight teams qualify for the conference tournament and the top two seeds play on Wednesday. The other four teams play on Thursday before the semifinals on Friday and the championship game at 6 p.m. ET on Saturday.
Standings
1. Alcorn State (14-4 in SWAC) [+350 to win tournament]
2. Texas Southern (13-5) [+190]
3. Southern (12-6) [+260]
4. Florida A&M (11-7) [+1500]
5. Alabama A&M (10-8) [+2200]
6. Grambling (9-9) [+3200]
7. Jackson State (9-9) [+1200]
8. Prairie View A&M (8-10) [+1200]
9. Alabama State (8-10)
10. Bethune Cookman (7-11)
11. Arkansas-Pine Bluff (5-13)
12. Mississippi Valley State (2-16)
The favorites
Texas Southern (+190): The Tigers enter as the favorites despite losing both regular season matchups to Alcorn State. The combined margin of victory in those games was four, however. Alcorn State won the first game, 73-72, and the second game, 75-72. Crazily enough, Texas Southern averages 69 points per game despite not having a player who averages over 10 points per game. But eight players average six or more points per game as the rotation goes 10 deep. Jordan Gilliam leads the team with 26 minutes per game and nine other players average at least 14 minutes of playing time.
Southern (+260): The Jaguars are the second-biggest favorites after losing four of their last seven games to end up as the No. 3 seed and face the potentiality of three games in three days to win the conference tournament. Southern swept its season series with Texas Southern and lost by four to Alcorn State. Tyrone Lyons leads the team with 13.7 points per game and shoots over 50% from the field and nearly 43% from three. Southern is also a very deep team; 11 players average at least 11 minutes per game.
A long shot to consider
Prairie View A&M (+1200): The Panthers got into the tournament via tiebreaker over Alabama State and didn’t get their first win of the season until beating Arkansas-Pine Bluff on January 10. But Prairie View went 7-7 the rest of the season — its first two conference losses were COVID-19 induced forfeits — and split the season series with Alcorn State, Texas Southern and Southern. The Panthers will rely a lot on Jawaun Daniels and Jeremiah Gambrell as they are far and away the team leaders in minutes played and shots attempted.
